Huntsville gazette., 1887-01-08
HUNTING THE COON.
A Spirit-Stirring Sport that is Out
of Fashion.
The Two Sorts Of Dog That Used to Be
Used In New Jersey-Eminent Men
- - Who Followed the
Chase.


What this country needs is sportsmen
with less -affectation and more snap.
Hunterss go from New Jersey to the
barren hills of Pennsylvania forty miles
/. or.more away, and stand all day on
:.:wind-swept runways waiting for a
4'shot at the deer that never comes, or
tramp from morning till night through
swampy swails and brambly thickets
hunting the pheasant that fails to rise,
while sport that famous men loved
and elevated and grew enthusiastic
over years ago. and from which no
hunter can return without pleasure and
profit, goes begging on every side of
us. The manner in which the oppor-
tunities offered by the hills and valleys
of Northern New Jersey for the rarest
of sport are neglected is enough to
make the bones of the dead and gone
lovers Of the star-lit chase turn and
aratt}e ins their graves. The star-lit
chase to which l refer was the coon
hunt, at which confession, doubtless,
every:owner of cake-fed setter and a
hundred-and- -ffty-dollar breech-loading
shotgun from Tri-States Rock to Pahag-
uary Flats, will raise a shout of derision
loud enough to scare every coon in
SissexsGpunty into. winter quarters six
weeks before his time. But why the
coon hunt has fallen into such dis
repute with the present generation of
sportsmen, and why the ring-tailed
and cunning denizen of the hills and
-hollows himself has come to be despised
by them, must be set down in the list
sof those things (which no fellow can find
..9ut.
Why tire coon should be so despised
: by our sportsmen of to-day is a mys-
= terry. He is as cunning as the fox and
more difficult to find. He should not
be despised, surely, because he can be
hunted only at night, for in threading
1.-THE woods sin the darkness, following
1sdogs .that you can not see, and whose
baying alone breaks the stiffness, there
is a most singular enchaIrtment. Or,
rather, there was such an enchantment,
for she baying Of the dogs is heard no
!. more. not simply because the genuine
coon hunt of feour fathers is a lost
= art, Y but because the coon dog Of
: our fathers SIS g species of animal
that may truly be said to have zbe-
come extincsAIe ewas-of9 no particular
strain of bleeeE,fas remember him,
but he united the keen scent of the
!. deefhound with the intelligence Of the
:shepherIdog, and the tenacity OF the
bulldog with the stealth of the panther.
With fewer accomplishments than these
he could have well been fully equipped
J for the fox or deer trail; the lowing
herd -Mould have been-safe in his keep
ing; he could have held his own in a
contest in the pit, or he could have
made himself conspicuous object in
any community as a highly successful
forager ON sheep pastures he
never could have been a coon dog. To
be that he needed not only scent but
knowledge; not only tenacity but willy
ness. For. your coon is a cute and
:. tricky customer. He is crammed to the
:muzzle with patience. He is wonder
i. full in strategy, and a taetician peerless.
4preever, his trail is as cold as ice on a
; window pane, and almostas scentless as
a. SNOWFALL He leads through tangled
swamps and deep, stony hollows. he
crosses and recrosses swift-runninS
streams He frisks around the tops of
!. rough stone walls as silent and swift
: asa shadow. He stops within a dozen
: feet of some convenient tree, clears the
intervening space with a single bound.
, strikes the stem of the tree five or six
feeet.from the ground, glides up to the
longest branch, runs to its very, ex-
tremity, and leaps dozen feet beyond
: it to the ground again, thus breaking
: his trail abruptly on one side and be-
; ginning it as confusingly abrupt on the
other. He invents tactics for emergen-
cies, and brings to every consideration
for his welfare and that of his family a
/ large and uniformly level head. To
match the cunning, the skill and the
almost human reasoning of this alert
. little prowler, in scientific and sports
manlike way, the old time coon dog
came to the front, and the frigidity OF
the evening had to be exceedingly un-
comfortable when he failed to hold as
many trump cards as the willy scheme er
he was after.
We had in those glorious days in this